Knowing the Best Time to Engage With Online Customers

Brendan Dykes of Genesys discusses the high costs of low engagement before sharing his advice for engaging at the best possible time.

Changing flight plans too close to departure conjures up nightmares for most of us. Even frequent flyers whose employers typically allow them to book business-class seats might not know the rules and costs when plans change. It’s frustrating.

These customers wander around online looking for answers. And that wandering makes them much more likely to abandon their search and call for help when it gets too complicated or takes too long.

What if you could understand when customers are not going down the right path or when they are lost? What if you could engage with them in real time or asynchronously—and even intercept carts on the verge of abandonment? The result would be a more successful website and happier customers.

The High Cost of Low Engagement

When carts are abandoned, leads are lost. The average eCommerce store loses over 75% of its sales to cart abandonment.

Some industries, according to Barilliance, experience average cart abandonment rates as high as 83.6%. And your business systems can capture the data needed to stem this loss and engage with customers in a personalised manner.

But connecting the moments as customers move through your channels is hard when you don’t know who to engage, when to engage, about which issue, or even how to connect with them.

Even when customers continue online self-service, a disjointed experience is a lost opportunity for businesses to offer premium service in a timely manner, present personalised offers and increase brand loyalty. Engaging in real time before frustration even begins, or asynchronously, saves valuable resources.

Predictive engagement lets you guide known and unknown website users and help them achieve what you have built your website for: to buy, to sign up for offers and to get answers.

These types of insights let you see which shoppers are likely to buy or abandon, then engage with them at the best time—at their moment of decision.

Automation Drives Sales Conversions

Applying predictive analytics to customer journeys better equips you to automate responses that shape the journey.

Using proactive chat, proactive callback and content offers enables you to maximise customer engagement during real-time conversations. And after visitors leave your website, you can still route the complete journey context to agents and sales reps. This intelligent automation builds on an understanding of online behaviour that improves customer experience and boosts sales conversion rates.

Such mutually desirable outcomes require the efficiency of AI and the power of the human touch. For example, chatbots are very effective at handling repetitive, simple and mundane tasks. But customers in the throes of disrupted travel or other issues might need human intervention.

The question is: When to offer human intervention and which agent is best to offer that support?

Brendan Dykes

In addition, transferring from bot to human and potentially back should be seamless and based on who can do the task best to achieve the desired business outcome.

Intelligent automation of tasks uses the best capabilities of human assistance, chatbots and micro-self-service technology to do this and builds stronger relationships with customers.

Author: Robyn Coppell